Friday, September 28, 2012

The free and open Internet is under threat. Companies, ISPs, and governments are all posing threats to net neutrality and internet privacy in various ways.

Fighting to keep your rights on the internet isn't easy, but fortunately, there are several tools to help. One extremely useful tool that I only recent started using is a consumer virtual private network, which protects me from any prying eyes at various companies, my own ISP, government entities, etc. It also lets me have a US IP address while traveling, which can be very handy.

My personal recommendation is AirVPN (note: I get no kickback for promoting AirVPN), but there are a number of good VPNs out there that can help keep you safe on the Internet - and even some free ones, if you really look around, though for the best service and speed, a good VPN does cost a little money. To learn more, check out this infographic, which outlines the basics of consumer VPN service:

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

So, over the past week, my wife and I have made much progress towards preparing for the impending arrival of the Babycrat - the Babycrat now has a place to sleep, a changing table, and perhaps most importantly, a car seat (which is required in order to get the hospital to release her to us - one of the many bizarre rules I didn't know existed until my wife and I decided to have the Babycrat). We're very excited, and are feeling just about as prepared as new parents can be, I think.

In other good news, I'm happy to announce that we, the American people, have finally gotten to meet some of the real Mitt Romney!

Nevertheless, I remained quite convinced that we still hadn't seen any of the REAL Mitt Romney - that, even given all of the above, all we had seen thus far of Mitt Romney is the fake, manufactured Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Boy, did that ever change yesterday.

Apparently, at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser with mega-rich Romney supporters back in May, Romney made very clear what he really thinks of about one-half of the American voting public. Not much commentary is necessary - I'll let Mother Jones (who unearthed the video) and Romney tell the story; I'll just note that this is the most natural, relaxed, fluid, and, dare I say, truthful that we've seen Romney all year:

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don'tassume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Mother Joneshas obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity. To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event, which occurred after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. [UPDATE:We can nowreportthat this fundraiser was held at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder on May 17 and we've removed the blurring from the video. See the original blurred videoshere.]

Here is Romney expressing his disdain for Americans who back the president:

At the dinner, Romney often stuck to familiar talking points. But there were moments when he went beyond the familiar campaign lines. Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this." Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, "I have inherited nothing." He remarked, "There is a perception, 'Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.' Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America."

Romney told the contributors that "women are open to supporting me," but that "we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we're in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation." When one attendee asked how this group could help Romney sell himself to others, he answered, "Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars." He added, "The fact that I'm either tied or close to the president…that's very interesting."

Asked why he wouldn't go full-throttle and assail Obama as corrupt, Romney explained the internal thinking of his campaign and revealed that he and his aides, in response to focus-group studies conducted by his consultants, were hesitant to hammer the president too hard out of fear of alienating independents who voted for Obama in 2008:

We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you—the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side—they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, "Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?" they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, "Are you disappointed that his policies haven't worked?" they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don't want to be told that they were wrong, that he's a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he's corrupt. Those people that we have to get, they want to believe they did the right thing, but he just wasn't up to the task. They love the phrase that he's "over his head." But if we're—but we, but you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have at speaking with those people is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment. He told you he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent. Hasn't been below eight percent since. Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won't graduate from high school. What're they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, "Yeah, I think you're right." What he's going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who's been successful, or who's, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.

To assure the donors that he and his campaign knew what they were doing, Romney boasted about the consultants he had retained, emphasizing that several had worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn't realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you.

When one donor said he was disappointed that Romney wasn't attacking Obama with sufficient intellectual firepower, Romney groused that the campaign trail was no place for high-minded and detail-oriented arguments:

Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the country, and people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a website that lays out white papers on a whole series of issues that I care about. I have to tell you, I don't think this will have a significant impact on my electability. I wish it did. I think our ads will have a much bigger impact. I think the debates will have a big impact…My dad used to say, "Being right early is not good in politics." And in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject—discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn't win elections. And there are, there are, there are—for instance, this president won because of "hope and change."

Romney, who spoke confidently throughout the event and seemed quite at ease with the well-heeled group, insisted that his election in and of itself would lead to economic growth and that the markets would react favorably if his chances seemed good in the fall:

They'll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

At the dinner, Romney also said that the campaign purposefully was using Ann Romney "sparingly…so that people don't get tired of her." And he noted that he had turned down an invitation fromSaturday Night Livebecause such an appearance "has the potential of looking slapstick and not presidential."

Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.

COMING SOON:More from the secret Romney video. (Romneytells his donorshe doesn't believe in a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that resolving this conflict is "almost unthinkable," and that he would merely "kick the ball down the field.")

Whoa, boy, I don't even know where to begin.

To say that this has caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the news would be a dramatic understatement.

I guess I am most floored by Romney's brazen declaration that he simply doesn't care about poor people, period. Romney says he's a Christian - I'm going to guess that Jesus would disagree with Romney on this point. I'm pretty sure Jesus had a lot to say about the poor in the Bible, and I don't think any of it was along the lines of "if people are poor, it's they're own damn fault, and they should be written off and left to starve; food is not a right!" Or if Jesus did say that, please point me to the book and verse.

One theme in Chris Hayes's bookTwilight of The Elitesis the notion that an elite cut off from the rest of society actually degrades. It comes to think of itself as intrinsically better than the rest of society, that it's success is a strict matter of providence. Effectively the elite becomes divorced from reality. What is most jarring about Romney's comments here is that divorce, that sense that Romney's grasp of America is so thin, that he believes that half of it is dismissible strictly on the grounds of laziness.

Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this istrue. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.

Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other.

Almost 1/4 who don't pay any income taxes are elderly, who probably spent their working lives paying income tax (and who vote disproportionately Republican, for some reason). The very poor make up another large chunk. In fact, many of the people who don't pay income taxes are either very young or elderly, while the vast majority of people pay income taxes for most of their life:

Furthermore, almost all of the states with the highest percentage of "moochers" are deeply Republican states, as shown by this map (the states with the most "moochers" are red; the states whose citizens pay the largest shares of income taxes are blue):

So, no only is Romney dismissing half the country; he's dismissing a large part of the Republican base.

Just how much of the Republican base? A lot, as even among the lowest income groups (the ones with the most "moochers"), 40% vote Republican:

Let's hope that the 40% of low earners who tend to vote Republican have the good sense to dismiss Romney as swiftly as he has dismissed them. They won't, but hey, a guy can dream, right?

Now compare, if you will, Romney's stiff, stilted, obviously scripted, unconvincing performance in his damage control press conference with the fluid, natural delivery of the above comments:

What I find most telling is the difference in the way Romney delivered both messages - there wasn't anything inarticulate with what he said in May; he was far more articulate in May than he was in his damage control press conference. So, which message do you think he actually believes?

And another rhetorical question - why would anyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual, Christian male vote for Mitt Romney, or for the Republican Party in general? I just don't get it.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Last year, I wrote a week's worth of posts giving what I thought to be sage wedding advice, to commemorate my wife's and my second wedding anniversary. Another year has come and gone, so I thought I'd revisit my wedding advice and update the post with new observations and ideas. So, here's an entire week's worth of wedding advice, combined into one post, to make it easy for friends and family members to share, email, etc. the advice with/to future brides and grooms. Feel free to share your thoughts, disagreements, or wedding tips in the comments!

The Beginning of a Week of Awesome Wedding Advice, Three Years in the Making

Happy Third Anniversary, Everyone!

In something somewhat out of character for this blog, we're celebrating Wedding Week here at The Angry Bureaucrat!

Three years ago this week, my wife and I were in the throes of wedding joy (and stress). Since that time, as we’ve read and heard about weddings being planned or happening, both of us have from time to time talked about writing a wedding advice column - because we both think our wedding rocked, and it rocked for a lot less money than many other people pay for far crappier weddings. As we prepared to celebrate our third anniversary, it seemed like a good opportunity to share some hard won wisdom. As an added bonus, the whole series is illustrated with actual pictures from our wedding, for those of you who are curious as to what it/we/our accessories looked like.

Before I start this series, my wife requests that she be given a disclaimer. She’s more tactful than I am, and although she generally supports my assertions in this series, she would probably not say things the same way I’ll state them. She would also say something to the effect of, “just because something was right for us doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.” So, there, she is indemnified. I also recognize that not all of these pieces of advice will hold for absolutely everyone, but we think that if most people were to abide by them, everyone (bride and groom included) would have a lot more fun at weddings and would waste a lot less money on them. But, my sincerest apologies in advance, if any of our advice offends anyone out there.

So, we'll spend the next hour or so sharing my/our advice on how to have an awesome wedding that won't break the bank. (Feel free to donate a portion of the money you save to support this site, via PayPal or the Google Checkout button on the right ;) ). First, we'll start with a critical guiding principle that everyone getting married should follow (and perhaps have temporary-tattooed on their foreheads), and then we’ll dive into the details. Below is what will perhaps be my most controversial piece of advice!

THE Critical Wedding Guiding Principle - It's Actually NOT All About YOU

See all these people? Your wedding is about all of them, too - it's not just about you. (These are Grant's family members who made it to the wedding.)

This will be hard for some people to swallow, but our first and most important Wedding Week lesson here at The Angry Bureaucrat is that your wedding isn't actually all about you ("you" singular or "the two of you"). If you approach your wedding in this way, you're already setting yourself up for disaster and/or disappointment. Our experience was that the most fun we had planning our wedding was when we were coming up with fun, creative ways for it to be a community-wide celebration of our joy, love, and union - and that we fought the most when we focused too much on us, on doing things this way or that, or otherwise being caught up in the details.

(Note: Based on a dinner conversation I had after I wrote the first draft of this post, I want to add that, of course, your wedding should and will fulfill your need to celebrate in the way you want as well. The point of this post is not to say that you should work to please everyone else above and beyond yourselves - that's certainly not the case. Nonetheless, this post is a strong recommendation to take the needs and wants of the people you love and care about into account when planning your wedding. I assume that your needs will be well-represented in your wedding - my experience has been that most couples don't need much help asserting their own wishes in their wedding planning. But, you and everyone around you will be much happier if you take into account the needs, wants, and feelings of your community as you plan your wedding - and this is something that I think people often lose, forget about, or are even told is wrong when planning a wedding.)

Wedding Week, Day #3 - Set a Budget and Then Prioritize

What's more important to you in your wedding? You should decide up-front - it will make decisions easier later.

Before you do anything else, decide how much money you have to spend, and what's most important to you in the wedding - what you're willing to spend your money on is the best indication of what's really important to you in your wedding. For us, the most important thing was throwing a fantastic, huge dinner and party for all of our family, close friends, and out-of-town guests, so that's what we spent a plurality of our money on. The least important thing was probably the clothes that we and our attendants wore - Ali's wedding dress was a dress she already owned (!), the bridesmaids' dresses were reasonable, and I didn't make my attendants rent/buy tuxes - they just wore dark suits they already owned, and we bought them different but matching ties as part of the attendant thank-you package.

You should know whether your flowers are more important than your cake, or your music more important than renting a car to drive you to the reception (we skipped this and just walked to our reception), and so on - you'll be making tradeoffs as you plan your wedding, and it's important to know what's most important to both of you.

When doing your budget, keep in mind these people's budgets too - they hold the power to make your wedding awesome or to make it suck, so don't piss them off!

Wedding Week, Day #4: Do NOT Have a Destination Wedding

One of many fantastic things that would not have happened if we'd had a destination wedding - because few (if any) of these wonderful people would have been able to come.

According to the latest statistics, 24% of you out there decide to have destination weddings. Our apologies to anyone who had/is having a destination wedding, but we think it was/is a bad idea. Personally, I don't think that "do not have a destination wedding" should be advice - I think it should be a rule.

Destination weddings embody the epitome of the "it's all about me" mentality. Think about it - you're essentially forcing your friends and family to take extra time off work and take a vacation to somewhere not of their own choosing while you're the center of attention for the whole vacation. It's so preposterous that I'm surprised this trend ever got started in the first place.

In addition to not being very considerate of the (probably relatively few) friends and family who will be able to afford to attend a destination wedding, you are (unless you run in fabulously wealthy circles) probably cutting most of your friends and family out of celebrating your wedding with you - and remember that they want to celebrate with you; they just don't want to celebrate completely on your terms.

Personally, we have only attended one destination wedding (at a picturesque lake somewhere in Europe), and honestly, we only attended because we just happened to be living in an adjoining country at the time - we never would have come if we'd had to travel from the USA like the rest of the wedding party. The only people who could attend were a few family members and one friend - even the parents of the bride couldn't attend!

By contrast, we held our wedding in our hometown, and we were able to host a gigantic party for 80 of our family members and closest friends - all for far less than what the airfare alone would cost for a destination wedding.

From our (limited) experience, in addition to being a significant time and financial burden on the few people who can attend and shutting out most of your friends and family from coming, having a destination wedding adds even more stress to the engaged couple. After all, you're adding vacation stress (travel and logistics in an unfamiliar place; not knowing the language; dealing with strange food; dealing with strange hairdressers and tailors in a foreign language; etc.) to the normal wedding stress - not a good combination. And unless you're going somewhere so remote that your wedding party is the only group around, everyone else at your destination wedding location will be conspicuously gawking at the bizarre spectacle unfolding before them - I am remembering a town full of Europeans who watched this American girl run around their tiny town in street clothes and a veil, and then in a wedding dress, for an entire day - they were utterly perplexed, and they did not try to hide their confusion.

Please please please, save everyone time, nerves, and money - don't have a destination wedding. Hold your wedding in one of your hometowns (even if you rarely go there anymore, like us), or if you really can't stand either of your hometowns, in an easily accessible, neutral third location, preferably somewhere about halfway between where your respective families live. Trust me - you'll thank me.

I'm guessing at least 24% of you vehemently disagree with this post; feel free to explain in the comments why a destination wedding was the only thing that made sense for you. And please go into a little more depth than "it was the only way to limit the number of guests" - while that may be true, I hope that's not all there is to it, since it's easy enough to limit guest numbers in other ways. (My new favorite way of limiting the number of guests is to hold the wedding on a random day, like a Tuesday.)

Wedding Week, Day #5 - Write Your Own Ceremony, Pretty Much from Scratch

Our rings, and our wedding ceremony (which we wrote ourselves).

Whether you get married in a church/synagogue/ashram/temple/etc., at a courthouse, outside, or at city hall, we think it's critical that you write your own ceremony - pretty much from scratch. And customize it however you want! It's hard work - we spent several weeks combing the web and our favorite books for what we wanted to include, picking the music, rearranging the order - and after we'd finished, we realized that we'd changed the Christian ceremony that we'd picked as our starting point into a largely Jewish ceremony. Go figure.

We also had a lot of fun talking about what we wanted in the ceremony and why - it helped us learn more about each other and grow together as a couple. Customizing the ceremony (especially writing our own vows) also gave us an understanding of what was most important to each of us as we began a life together. We also took out outdated parts of the ceremony, such as "who gives this bride away" and "speak now or forever hold your peace" - if these things are in your wedding ceremony, I'll think that you didn't work on it very hard. (Or, I suppose you could carefully consider the options and decide that you really do want to give someone the opportunity to protest your union in front of all your friends and family - but I'd find allowing that rather odd.)

We also involved our community a good deal in the ceremony itself - my parents sang a duet; Ali's parents gave us a blessing; a family friend played the trumpet; our attendants did readings; and we sang some songs/hymns (upbeat ones!). We tried to give our community as much opportunity to be involved and celebrate with us as possible (or as much opportunity as they wanted, anyway). Your community is bursting with talent, and you should take advantage of that by inviting them to participate in your ceremony and celebrations! Some folks might decline, but most people will jump at the opportunity to play a special role in your special day.

Perhaps more so than with any other part of the wedding, you only get out of your wedding ceremony as much as you put into it - though it's true that you end up just as married all the same. However, if you overlook this part of the wedding and don't customize it to fit you as a couple, you're missing a serious opportunity to get to know your future spouse more deeply, in a way that is difficult to replicate in a different setting, and you're missing an opportunity to knit your community together more tightly. So, get to work!

Below, we'll talk even more about getting your community involved in your wedding, in ways that will save you serious time, stress, and money and will get them excited to participate in your celebration - a major win-win-win-win!

Wedding Week, Day #6 - De-Professionalize As Much As Possible

De-professionalizing as much of your wedding as possible accomplishes three major goals - it gets your community much more involved in the planning and execution of your wedding celebration; it can take a lot of responsibility off your shoulders (if you let it); and it will save you a TON of money.

You can imagine how lovely the uncensored version of this
invitation looked - and the bride did it herself.

De-professionalizing as much as possible was one of the reasons why we were able to have a fantastic wedding and throw three (3!) separate parties celebrating our marriage for about 1/3 the cost of just the average US wedding ceremony and reception.

Part of de-professionalizing is decentralizing. We gave away entire swaths of our wedding to other people to plan and execute with minimal attention from us, so we could focus on what was most important to us - having a great time with our family and friends. This also gave our family a good excuse to come a couple days early, so we got to spend more time with everyone.

We de-professionalized (and decentralized) our wedding in many, many ways:

We didn't have a professional wedding planner. We were our wedding planners. Everyone should do this - it's a bit of work, yes, but it will save you a ton of money, and you'll have a much better chance to put together the wedding that you want to have.

Ali did our invitations (see above), with a little spare time and a couple of free fonts we liked. You can do this, or you have a friend who knows enough PhotoShop or InDesign to do this in exchange for dinner or a bottle of wine. You then get them printed yourself and have beautiful invitations at a fraction of the cost of paying a professional to do it all.

My mom planned and (with the help of her female relatives) executed most of the post-ceremony reception.

My mom baked the bride's cake.

One of Ali's best friends decorated the bride's cake.

A family friend baked and decorated the groom's cake.

A family friend decorated the reception space.

A former high school teacher/mentor did the flowers.

Church friends provided the music.

All of these were done by non-professionals for our wedding. You know people who can do stuff like this too.

I'm probably missing a few, but you get the idea. Granted, we paid some money towards some of the things on the above list, but they cost us far less than if we had paid professionals to do everything for us. As an added bonus, our whole community was involved in and excited about our wedding, and they were (or at least acted like they were!) happy and glad to help us out and be involved. We couldn't have done it without them, and we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun without their contributions.

Your community has an enormous pool of talent you can tap, and they have friends and family who are also talented - just ask them to contribute their talents to help you celebrate your wedding. Of course, I expect you'll give them general boundaries, parameters, guidelines, etc. - but within those boundaries, leave them the creative license (remember: it's not all about you) to see what they come up with to help celebrate your union.

Many people think it’ll just be easier to hire someone, but that's often simply wrong. That person you hire has to be directed (by you) and is only going to do exactly what you are able to direct them to do (how much do you know about flower arrangements or cake decorating?). Furthermore, they don’t care about you personally - it’s their job, so why would/should they go the extra mile for you? Your community cares, and their contribution will make the day more meaningful and less about money.

Now, we'll delve into the details of a part of the wedding that is often misguided - food and drinks.

Wedding Week, Day #7 - Food and Drink Advice

If this had been slathered with fondant, I would have refused to eat it.

Advice #1: Do Not Have Fondant Icing on Your Wedding Cake

Although it looks good, fondant (Wikipedia calls it an "icing-like substance," not icing) tastes like a mixture of ground-up cardboard and sweetened silly putty. If you absolutely have to have a fondant cake because of the way it looks, make it one that no one actually has to eat, and have sheet cakes with better-tasting (real) icing for people to eat. Seriously - no one wants to eat a fondant cake. No one. Fondant - not even once.

Advice #2: If Serving a Meal, Serve a Real Meal

One consistent complaint I've had about several weddings I've attended (and that I've seen repeated ad nauseam online) is that the food served at weddings is often sub-par catered fare. Here's how we avoided that.

We ended up having 3 large, semi-public, semi-organized parties to celebrate our marriage: 1) the rehearsal dinner (open to family, wedding party, and out-of-town guests, as usual), 2) the reception at the church right after the ceremony (open to everyone), and 3) a dinner and party at a local restaurant for family, close friends, and out-of-town guests a couple of hours after the reception at the church.

Since we had a lot of friends coming from far away to our little Southern town for this wedding, they wanted to have a taste of the South while they were visiting. We weren't terribly excited by this - but our wedding wasn't all about us. So, Ali's mom organized a bunch of proper Southern ladies to whip up a huge, traditional, home-cooked Southern feast for the rehearsal dinner. The food was a smörgåsbord of home-cooked deliciousness at almost no cost.

My mom (with the rest of the female members of her family) catered the reception right after the ceremony. This was probably the most traditional food of the weekend, as it was somewhat standard reception fare, but they did a great job - and people were walking around and interacting with each other and us, rather than being trapped at a table trying to cut warmed-over chicken Kiev with a butter knife and making small talk with people they don't know very well.

As an added bonus, we gave our mothers near-free reign to organize the above parties as they wanted, so they got to put their touch on the weekend, and we had a lot of responsibility lifted off our shoulders - a serious win-win!

With our mothers taking care of those two parties, we focused most of our attention on the party we cared about most - the semi-formal sit-down dinner and party that went from about 6PM until well past midnight. To put together an awesome event at a reasonable cost, we contacted a local restaurant (thanks again, Matt!) and promised them that we would spend at least a certain minimum amount on food and drinks if they would close the restaurant to everyone but us. It was a smallish restaurant, so our ~80 people just about filled it to capacity.

Part of our mostly pre-decorated dinner/party venue.

This was fantastic on several levels - we got to pick a fun, dynamic venue that needed almost no additional decorations, instead of having to (pay to) decorate a relatively sterile event hall. We didn't have to rent anything for the dinner - not the venue, silverware, tables, chairs, glasses, napkins, etc. - all the stuff that adds up to serious cash if you're having an event catered in an event hall. All we paid for was the food and drink. We worked with the chef beforehand to come up with menu options that were personally meaningful to us and that everyone would like. Everything was cooked to order and delicious. And speaking of food, this brings us to:

Advice #3: Have Plenty of Alcohol

Pay for everyone's food, and have plenty amount of alcohol available (unless there are strict religious reasons not to) - your guests are all there to celebrate with you; they're giving you gifts; you're only going to do this once (you hope); and good food and alcohol really aren't that expensive. If you really can't afford to do this, then just don't serve dinner or make alcohol available - go with hors d'oeuvres alone.

You may have to look around a bit to find the right restaurant to host this kind of event (and that will only charge you for food and drinks). In this economy, however, you should be able to find a restaurant that will do this for you (city-dwellers, you may have to look at smaller restaurants out in the 'burbs) - and you'll have a much better time (and much better food) at much lower cost if you arrange a dinner and party in this way.

Aside from the ceremony, our dinner and party was the most important (and most fun) part of the whole weekend - everyone had a fantastic time, and it didn't break our bank, even though it was the most expensive part of our wedding. But for us, celebrating with our family and friends was the most important part of our wedding - so that's where we put a plurality of our money.

Wedding Week, Day #Last - When the Big Day Comes, It's Already Too Late

When things go wrong, take it in stride ...

I wish I knew where I got this piece of advice, so I could credit them, but I just can't remember.

Anyway - with weddings, you plan the best you can and set up everything to run as smoothly as possible. However, on the wedding day, don't sweat things that go wrong - because things will go wrong. Usually just some small things, occasionally a big thing, but at that point, there's nothing you can do, so don't worry about it. If you decide beforehand that you've done everything you can and that you're just going to let the day play out as it plays out while enjoying and savoring every moment, you (and everyone around you) will have a much better time than if you freak out because:

your ring-bearer refuses to walk down the aisle;

the order of events in the reception gets messed up;

your bride gets a sinus infection and has to be hopped up on steroids for the big day;

a drunk cousin "borrows" (read: steals) someone's phone;

or one (or more) of a billion other things goes wrong.

(Note: All of those things actually happened at our wedding. Feel free to share your own not-to-be-sweated horror stories in the comments.)

You did your best, and if you followed the advice from The Angry Bureaucrat's Wedding Week, everyone else will be having a blast. Besides which, you need some funny mishap stories from your wedding right? So just relax, laugh, and have the best day of your life too. And, if you’ve followed the advice in this series, you'll have done it all for far less cash than the average American.

(I also wanted to mention that most of the photos featured this week were taken by Lindsay Gross - if you have professional photography needs in Middle or Eastern TN, we highly recommend her!)

That's it for Wedding Week here at The Angry Bureaucrat - I hope you've enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them. No matter what, you're going to enjoy and cherish your wedding day, and I hope my reflections on my own wedding help you have an even more awesome wedding than you were going to have.

... and everything will be awesome!

Happy 3rd Anniversary, My Dear!

P.S. I'm sorry for this, but I felt the need to add a small legal disclaimer - I retain all rights to all the photos and text in this post. No one is allowed to use the photos or text without my written permission.

About This Blog

I am one of the largely nameless, faceless bureaucrats who work tirelessly (and largely thanklessly) to help ensure that poor people don't go hungry - and a billion other tasks government bureaucrats do that no one notices until something stops working. Living and working in DC is making me angry - and I vent my anger as thoughtfully as I can. Well, OK, maybe I'm not terribly angry ... but I thought it was a good name for a blog. If you're also a bureaucrat, or angry, or thoughtful, I'm happy to entertain guest posts.